Stellar Blade Review

Stellar Blade is one of those action-adventure boob games. You probably know the ones I mean, where you fight off huge monsters using incredible powers whilst wearing skin-tight fetish outfits. We’re talking head-to-toe black leather that looks like it was painted on with incredibly thin paint, and that’s one of the more reserved options you have for dressing up Eve. Once you’ve adjusted to the constant fetishisation, there’s a pretty enjoyable game to be found in here with quite a few interesting quirks, along with a few not-so-interesting ones.

If I were to quickly describe how Stellar Blade plays, I’d say Bayonetta crossed with Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, if only because I’ve never played Nier Automata, the most common point of comparison. Structurally speaking, the layout of the game’s levels and designs of many of its enemies give a Star Wars Jedi vibe – you’ve even got a drone following you around that isn’t too unlike BD-1, though this one can also be used as a gun. There’s also a handful of enemies that wouldn’t look out of place in any Star Wars media. There lots of wide open spaces to navigate, as well as some slightly more linear areas that play almost like a gauntlet as you try to reach the next camp.

In these levels, you’ll be fighting off a very wide variety of Naytiba, which is what the monsters are called here, using counters, dodges, special attacks, and even more special attacks. The action here is fast, explosive, and challenging, with even relatively weak enemies able to ruin your day if you’re careless. There are a lot of combat mechanics to wrap your head around as well, such as guns with severely limited ammo, and two different colour coded abilities, Blink and Repulse, that are used when an enemy glows blue or purple, respectively. I initially struggled with this because I’m colourblind – thankfully there’s accessibility options for that –  but I then had an issue with them not triggering for some reason, or when it occurs while the camera isn’t pointing towards that enemy, and the button command involves pushing towards them, so it rarely works.

There are a few little niggles like this sprinkled throughout the game, which is frustrating, because I’ve actually been having a lot of fun. Whilst I was initially a little apprehensive of the game’s tone (I accidentally unequipped my armour at one point and yes, you can play in what’s called the “skin suit”), when you get into combat there are a lot of options available to you and you can feel very powerful when you’re really in the zone, countering and perfect dodging everything whilst blasting off special attacks. But sooner or later you encounter one of those small problems that pull you out of it. Like when I was slogging my way through an area that felt like padding with just tons of repeating enemies, and I fell through a little gap in the floor into the ocean that kills you in the three seconds with no way out, forcing me back to a camp and respawning all of the enemies, Soulslike style.

It’s even more annoying when it happens in a platforming section, because you just kind of slide off what you were jumping onto for some reason, or when your character auto-climbs onto a tiny fence and slides off the other side. These are not insurmountable issues, they’re just occasional blips that take you out of the moment with a sudden, sharp stab of frustration.

The narrative weaving these combat moments together is certainly interesting enough to keep you invested, though you’ll see some major story beats coming before you get to them. Eve is part of a squad sent to Earth to save it from the Naytibas, but when you arrive something inevitably goes wrong and you find yourself saving the world without the help of your elite squad. You do have an engineer and a guy with a ship, though. It’s good that the story is compelling, because the game can be a bit ham-fisted in how it tells it. Whether it’s awkward dialogue, cutscenes with checkpoints before them, or dialogue for side quests going on too long – the camera is just frozen in place and it takes multiple button presses to skip dialogue, for some reason. Despite this, the combat and stories still carried me through, even if I was a little tired of side quests by the end, of which there are plenty.

Stellar Blade looks pretty, well, stellar a lot of the time. Sure, you’re stuck in the desert a bit too much, and you’ll occasionally encounter a blurry texture in some out of the way places, but there’s nothing too bad and character models have a ton of detail in them. Obviously Eve – a character based on scans of South Korean model Shin Jae-eun – is the centre of attention, with dozens of get ups to choose between. Most are very, very skintight, but the Skin Suit goes as far as possible to hide as little as possible. The contrast from Eve (or any of the other female characters) to how every single male character is so thoroughly covered up is hilarious. It’s something that will matter to a lot of people, but whether it’s positive or negative will depend on the individual.

I played on the default balanced graphics mode, which achieves 4K and 60fps via upscaling, but there’s also a 1440p locked 60fps performance mode, and a 30fps quality mode. I did briefly switch to quality mode but found I struggled more in combat because I’m, frankly, not very good. Thankfully, there’s also an easier difficulty available if you want it, which isn’t so easy as to feel patronising – you’ll still die pretty quickly if you’re not careful.

One of my personal favourite parts is the soundtrack, though. There’s a kind of dreamy music style when you’re at camps, to a slightly more active but still kind of surreal style when you’re exploring, before stepping up to energetic combat music and full-on metal for boss fights. The music is excellent and rest of the sound if great too, whether it’s the grinding of a boss’ saws or the thump and impact from guns. The only sore spot is that some voice acting sounds a little off, not that the reads are bad exactly, more like they were recorded separately without being able to match each other’s tone. It just sounds a little unnatural.